Science 2.0: A Web Native Research Record – Applying the Best of the Web to the Lab Notebook

Intro

Here’s the second of my notes from the Science 2.0 conference, a conference for scientists who want to know how software and the web is changing the way they work. It was held on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 29th at the MaRS Centre in downtown Toronto and attended by 102 people. It was a little different from most of the conferences I attend, where the primary focus is on writing software for its own sake; this one was about writing or using software in the course of doing scientific work.

This entry contains my notes from Cameron Neylon’s presentation, A Web Native Research Record – Applying the Best of the Web to the Lab Notebook.

Here’s the abstract:

Best practice in software development can save researchers time and energy in the critical analysis of data but the same principles can also be applied more generally to recording research process. Successful design patterns on the web tend to be those that successfully couple people into efficient information transfer mechanisms. Can we re-think the way we create, keep, and share our research records by using these design patterns to make it more effective?

Here’s Cameron’s bio:

Cameron Neylon is a biophysicist who has always worked in interdisciplinary areas and is a leading advocate of data availability. He currently works as Senior Scientist in Biomolecular Sciences at the ISIS Neutron Scattering facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council. He writes and speaks regularly on the interface of web technology with science and is well-known as one of the leading proponents of open science.